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With  the  Writer’s  Compliments 


CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  EDUCATION  OF 
SCIENTIFIC  KNOWLEDGE  ABOUT 
THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


By  J.  F.  DASHIELL 

Kenan  Professor  of  Psychology 
University  of  North  Carolina 
Chapel  Hill,  North  Carolina 


Offprint  from  the 

Thirty-Seventh  Yearbook  of  the  National  Society  for  the 
Study  of  Education,  Part  II.  “The  Scientific 
Movement  in  Education,”  1938 

I  !# y. , , 

* 


Note:  This  offprint  of  Chapter  XXXII  (pages  393-403  of  the  Thirty-Seventh 
Yearbook,  Part  II)  is  made  by  permission  of  the  Society  for 
private  distribution  by  the  author.  Copies  of  the 
entire  yearbook  (534  pages)  from  which  this 
offprint  is  made  may  be  secured  for  $3.00 
postpaid  in  paper  binding,  or  $4.00 
postpaid  in  cloth  binding,  from 
the  commercial  agents  of 
the  Society 

•  ;-V  ?  /  . 

THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

. 

Bloomington,  Illinois 


All  copyright  privileges  reserved  by  the  Society 


CHAPTER  XXXII 


CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  EDUCATION  OF  SCIENTIFIC  KNOWL¬ 
EDGE  ABOUT  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


J.  F.  Dashiell 

Kenan  Professor  of  Psychology 
University  of  North  Carolina 
Chapel  Hill,  North  Carolina 


I.  Education  as  Guided  Habit-Forming 

Education  is  guided  learning.  Learning,  in  turn,  is  habit-forming, 
if  taken  generally  enough;  for  even  when  in  a  particular  case  the  aim 
is  not  that  of  forging  some  mode  of  thinking  or  acting  that  will  operate 
always  in  a  fixed  way  thereafter  but  is  that  of  developing  a  more  gen¬ 
eral  attitude — that  of  independent  inquiry,  say,  or  that  of  making  a 
student  resourceful  in  solving  ‘originals’ — even  then  the  teacher’s  regard 
is  toward  the  learner’s  future,  and  he  hopes  that  the  present  activity 
will  set  up  in  the  learner  an  abiding  tendency  of  some  sort.  Education 
is  guided  habit-forming. 

II.  The  Structure  of  a  FIabit 

Within  the  time  of  the  present  generation  and  up  until  very  recent 
years  there  flourished  a  beautifully  over-simplified  notion  of  what  we 
mean  by  the  word  ‘habit.’  It  is  well  illustrated  by  a  classic  experiment 
on  the  white  rat,  by  Watson  in  1907.  In  order  to  determine  which  of  the 
sensory  functions  of  that  animal  are  finally  essential  to  its  learning  to 
thread  its  way  successfully  through  a  complicated  maze,  he  tested  in 
the  maze  blind  rats,  deaf  rats,  rats  with  olfactory  bulbs  removed,  and 
rats  minus  their  vibrissae  and  with  anesthetized  feet,  in  each  case  the 
animals  showed  much  the  same  capacity  to  learn  as  did  normal  ani¬ 
mals,  and  by  the  logical  process  of  elimination  W  atson  concluded  that 
only  the  kinesthetic  stimulations  arising  from  the  animals  own  moving 
muscles  (also  possibly  the  organic)  were  necessary  for  the  building  up 


394  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


of  a  particular  maze-running  habit.  And  this  apparent  logical  outcome 
bolstered  the  theory  that  what  a  habit  essentially  consists  of  is  a  chain 
of  movement-aroused  reflexes.  When  a  man  makes  the  first  responses 
of  a  learned  act,  the  very  moving  of  the  muscles  and  joints  involved  sets 
up  sensory  nerve  currents  that  arouse  the  next  responses;  the  currents 
from  these  arouse  the  next;  and  so  on.  A  complicated  performance — be 
it  reciting  a  passage  from  Virgil  or  repeating  the  multiplication  table  or 
playing  a  Chopin  nocturne — becomes  a  well-integrated  habit  to  the 
degree  that  successive  sensori-motor  units  become  welded  into  a  def¬ 
inite,  unvarying  sequence  of  little  acts. 

But  more  recent  experimental  work  by  many  (Gengerelli,  Dennis, 
Hunter,  Lashley,  Macfarlane,  Dashiell,  and  others)  has  exhibited  the 
untenable  nature  of  such  an  extreme  view.  Animals  can  be  trained  to 
take,  say,  a  left-hand  instead  of  a  right-hand  turn  regardless  of  the 
length  of  the  avenue  of  approach  to  the  turn  and  of  any  new  elbows 
in  it.  Once  trained  to  run  without  error  in  an  ordinary  maze,  they  will 
swim  the  same  maze  without  error  if  it  be  immersed;  or  again,  if  after 
the  learning  they  be  so  operated  that  they  can  progress  only  by  rolling 
and  tumbling  they  will  continue  to  negotiate  the  turns  correctly.  If 
given  opportunity  to  take  diverse  routes  to  the  same  food-goal,  they 
will  oftentimes  follow  new  alternative  routes  without  making  any  turns 
in  a  wrong  direction.  In  short,  it  has  become  clear  that  we  need  not  go 
higher  than  subhuman  species  to  observe  that  an  organized  habit  is 
something  vastly  more  than  a  chain  of  reflex  arcs  joined  by  the  cement 
of  kinesthetic  impulses.  Any  well-learned  performance  remains  a  vari¬ 
able  and  adaptable  performance. 

III.  The  Trial-and-Error  Principle 

In  the  late  nineteenth  century,  Lloyd-Morgan  had  invoked  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  trial-and-error  as  the  explanation  of  habit  forming — “varied 
trial  and  error  with  the  utilization  of  chance  success.”  This  conception 
was  then  given  powerful  support  by  Thorndike’s  well-known  experi¬ 
mental  studies  on  dogs  and  cats.  His  method  was  to  put  animals  when 
hungry  in  enclosures  from  which  they  could  escape  by  some  simple  act, 
such  as  pulling  at  a  loop  of  cord  or  stepping  on  a  platform.  The  animal 
was  put  in  the  enclosure,  food  was  left  outside  in  sight,  and  his  actions 
observed.  At  first  the  animal’s  behavior  was  decidedly  random,  consist¬ 
ing  of  mewings  or  barkings,  scratchings,  bitings,  sniffing  here  and  there, 
looking  here  and  there,  with  no  evidence  of  any  system  or  directness. 


DASH  I  ELL 


395 


Sooner  or  later,  however,  lie  chanced  to  hit  upon  the  particular  move¬ 
ment  that  secured  his  release;  then,  in  the  course  of  retrials  on  the  same 
problem,  lie  came  somehow  to  make  the  ^successful  movements  more 
and  more  promptly,  until  at  last  the  definite  habit  would  be  set  up  of 
going  directly  to  the  lever  or  other  crucial  object.  Thorndike’s  work 
fashioned  the  mold  in  which  the  experimental  studies  of  animal  learning 
were  to  be  cast  for  the  next  twenty-five  years 

Many  are  the  experiments  in  human  psychology  (by  Bryan  and 
Harter,  Book,  Starch,  Bair,  Batson,  Chapman,  Snoddy,  Barnes,  and 
others)  leading  to  similar  conclusions.  I  need  mention  only  that  of 
Swift  in  which  he  studied. the  progress  of  learning  the  juggler’s  act  of 
keeping  two  balls  in  the  air.  He  made  the  significant  observation  that 
a  more  effective  technique  in  the  handling  of  the  balls  was  often  hit 
upon  without  the  learner’s  being  aware  of  the  fact  until  he  came  to  real¬ 
ize  later  that  he  had  unconsciously  adopted  and  established  the  new 
trick  of  throwing  or  of  catching.  Certainly  it  resulted  from  no  analytic 
perception  of  just  what  to  do  or  just  how  to  improve. 

In  consequence  of  experimental  reports  like  these,  the  orthodox  view 
of  habit-forming,  in  human  as  in  subhuman  forms,  leaned  to  an  extreme 
emphasis  upon  the  random,  hit-or-miss,  trial- and- err  or,  unanalytic 
character  of  the  learning. 

IV.  The  Principle  of  Insight 

Within  the  last  ten  years  a  reaction  has  clearly  set  in.  Adams,  for 
example,  repeated  the  Thorndike  type  of  experiment,  but  with  results 
that  have  to  be  interpreted  differently.  A  cat  placed  in  an  enclosure 
appeared  at  no  time  to  scramble  about  and  claw  indiscriminately ;  and 
in  the  course  of  31  trials  he  found  his  way  out,  not  by  one  stereotyped 
movement  he  had  hit  on,  but  by  pulling  the  proper  string  in  no  fewer 
than  ten  different  manners,  pulling  at  it  in  widely  different  places  and 
variously  with  teeth,  chin,  or  paw.  Maier,  after  familiarizing  a  rat  with 
a  table  top  and  also,  but  separately,  with  an  elevated  maze  pathway, 
then  placed  the  animal  upon  the  table  with  its  food  behind  a  barrier  but 
approachable  by  the  roundabout  maze  pathway.  After  a  short  period 
of  vain  explorations  on  the  table,  the  typical  rat  would  suddenly  lace 
about,  apparently  seek  out  the  maze  entrance  and  promptly  run  this 
long-way-round  to  the  food.  It  was,  therefore,  concluded  that  this  ani¬ 
mal  can  combine  the  essential  elements  of  two  different  experiences  in 
a  novel  and  adjustive  fashion  to  reach  an  objective. 


396  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


Most  famous  arc  the  researches  on  apes  of  Kohler,  Ycrkes,  Bingham, 
and  others,  which  are  so  well  known  that  a  single  sample  will  suffice.  A 
chimpanzee,  on  finding  a  banana  suspended  from  the  roof  at  a  point 
quite  out  of  his  reach,  would  be  seen  to  make  all  sorts  of  ineffectual 
efforts  to  obtain  it,  jumping,  running  about,  throwing  objects  at  the 
banana,  and  climbing  up  and  down  over  boxes  left  lying  about.  But  at 
length,  while  touching  a  box  he  would  hesitate,  his  movements  would 
become  slower;  and  then  with  eyes  upon  the  food  he  would  push  his 
box  over  under  it  and  mount  to  a  point  from  which  he  could  pull  it 
down.  In  a  word,  then,  the  ape  will  solve  a  problematic  situation,  not 
by  the  method  of  repeated  blind  trials  with  the  gradual  selection  of  the 
successful  movements  in  a  manner  not  necessarily  involving  any  atten¬ 
tion  thereto,  but  by  the  method  of  attentive  scrutiny  of  the  field  and  a 
'perceiving  of  certain  crucial  relationships  within  it. 

This  technique  of  Kohler’s  has  been  applied  in  America  to  learning 
by  human  infants  and  children  and  by  defectives  (Alpert,  Matheson, 
Aldrich  and  Doll,  and  others)  ;  and  the  observations  obtained  on  these 
subjects  are  consistent  with  those  of  Kohler.  They  are  quite  consistent 
also  with  other  studies  of  analytical  learning  by  human  subjects. 

In  general,  then,  it  must  nowadays  be  recognized  that  a  habit  is  ac¬ 
quired  in  man  and  in  many  brutes  not  always  by  blind  hyperactivity 
with  occasional  chancing  upon  adequate  movements  and  then  a  slow 
process  of  unconscious  selecting  and  fixating  of  these  lucky  movements; 
instead  it  is  often  a  display  of  intelligent  insights. 

Experimental  studies  of  insightful  learning  have  often  been  called 
studies  in  ‘problem-solving,’  and  the  term  is  a  happy  one.  Immediately 
we  see  the  relevance  to  many  forms  of  educative  training.  ‘Originals’  in 
arthmetic,  algebra,  geometry,  and  physics  are  to  be  contrasted  with  the 
drill  work  of  learning  the  multiplication  table  or  the  spelling  of  impor¬ 
tant  words.  So,  too,  with  the  ‘thought  questions’  in  civics,  in  literature, 
and  in  many  other  studies;  the  learning  task  then  set  the  child  is  not 
that  of  fixing  by  repetition  a  given  mode  of  speaking,  writing,  or  acting, 
but  that  of  bringing  his  resources  and  his  experience — his  stock  of 
habits — to  bear  on  a  difficulty  that  is  new  to  him  in  some  ways;  and 
he  is  forced  to  make  some  analytic  examination  of  it  to  see  whether  he 
can  discern  the  crucial  relationships  that  obtain.  More  generally,  we 
may  say  that  a  fundamental  assumption  of  present-day  education  is 
that  the  child  is  learning  in  the  truest  sense  when  he  is  achieving  new 
insights. 


DASHIELL 


397 


V.  The  Principle  of  Conditioned  Response 

During  the  last  fifteen  years  or  so  much  attention  has  been  given 
in  the  experimental  laboratories  to  the  phenomenon  of  the  ‘conditioned 
response.  The  observations  and  claims  of  Pavlov  and  of  Bekhterev  have 
been  subjected  to  increasingly  detailed  experimental  examination  and, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  verified.  Those  Russian  workers  had  found 
that  a  dog  could  be  trained  to  salivate  or  a  man  to  jerk  back  his  foot 
involuntarily  upon  the  receptiqn  of  any  stimulation,  however  seemingly 
irrelevant,  if  only  it  be  frequently  accompanied  or  closely  followed  by 
a  stimulation  that  was  already  effective.  Thus  there  reappeared  the 
centuries-old  principle  of  learning  by  association,  but  now  clothed  in 
garments  of  high  biological  respectability.  Many  particular  detailed 
principles  contained  in  the  phenomena  of  conditioning  were  unravelled 
by  Pavlov’s  genius — conditioned  inhibition,  differentiation,  irradiation, 
and  several  others — and  the  bulk  of  experimental  work  since  has  been 
devoted  to  their  successful  verification  (by  Hull,  Hilgard,  Marquis, 
Bernstein,  Garvey,  Jones,  Switzer,  Wolfle,  Razran,  Skinner,  and  others). 

On  the  interpretative  side,  however,  the  views  of  Pavlov  seemed  not 
to  have  been  fairly  grasped  until  of  late.  It  had  been  supposed  by  many 

(a)  that  conditioning  was  an  ultra-simple  process  in  which  one  specific 
stimulus  was  substituted  for  another  specific  stimulus  or  one  specific 
motor  response  substituted  for  another  specific  motor  response;  and 

(b)  that  this  substituting  occurred  in  an  impersonal,  mechanical  man¬ 
ner  that  might  be  ever  so  remote  from  what  the  man  or  animal  might 
be  interested  in  at  the  time — might  be,  in  other  words,  unmotivated. 
But  certain  lines  of  experimentation  (by  Liddell,  especially,  also  Hull, 
Zener,  et  al.)  have  led  to  a  rereading  of  Pavlov,  a  rereading  that  has 
supported  broader  interpretations ;  and  nowadays  the  two  assumptions 
just  mentioned  would  be  considered  naive,  because  ( a )  the  phenomenon 
of  stimulus-substitution  (or  response-substitution)  is  one  that  orig¬ 
inally  involves  almost  the  whole  organism  and  only  gradually  becomes 
localized,  and  (b)  it  occurs  only  when  the  organism  is  in  an  alert  con¬ 
dition,  and  its  behavior  from  first  to  last  reveals  needs  and  tensions 
that  seek  relief. 

From  the  practical  angle  two  points  may  be  mentioned.  First,  the 
conditioned  response  has  thrown  into  a  sound  biological  perspective  the 
simpler  instances  in  which  the  student-pupil  acquires  a  new  stimulus- 
response,  as  when  he  comes  to  say  ‘cat’  when  seeing  that  word  printed 


398  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


on  a  card.  Second,  it  has  become  even  more  fruitful  in  furnishing  a  key 
to  those  peculiarities  in  one’s  emotional  make-up  in  which  how  one  feels 
about  a  thing  or  a  person  or  an  idea  seems  utterly  inappropriate  and 
irrational.  The  early  work  of  Watson  in  exhibiting  how  a  senseless  fear 
can  be  implanted  in  a  child  by  conditioning,  and  again  how  it  can  be 
eliminated  by  conditioning,  has  had  extensive  influence  in  the  fields  of 
mental  hygiene.  For  example,  an  unreasoning  phobia  for  the  sound  of 
church  bells  or  for  the  sight  of  a  locomotive  has  become  understandable 
enough  if  we  see  its  genesis  in  some  intense  or  repeated  experience  of 
the  child  when  bell-ringing  or  when  a  locomotive  were  incidental  accom¬ 
paniments  of  a  situation  in  which  a  child  experienced  pronounced  fear 
or  dread  of  some  other  and  entirely  adequate  incident  or  factor. 

VI.  The  Role  of  Reward  and  Punishment 

It  has  been  implied  in  a  preceding  paragraph  that  contemporary 
research  appears  to  demonstrate  that  a  person  or  animal  will  form  a 
new  habit,  even  on  the  level  of  the  conditioned  response,  only  if  in  some 
way  he  is  motivated.  But  ‘being  motivated’  is  an  ambiguous  term;  for 
it  may  refer  to  the  guidance  of  learning  by  incidental  pleasures  and 
pains,  or  to  the  general  energizing  of  the  learner,  or  to  the  part  played 
by  his  interest  in  some  objective  goal. 

The  pleasure-pain  doctrine  is  of  ancient  vintage,  but  its  modern 
psychological  form  makes  more  modest  claims  than  did  its  ethical  and 
economic  predecessors.  The  scientific  problem  of  recent  times,  by  con¬ 
trast,  is:  What  part  do  the  incidental  pleasantnesses  and  unpleasant¬ 
nesses  (or  rewards  and  punishments),  play  in  the  directing  of  learning? 
The  Law  of  Effect,  advanced  in  the  9Q’s  by  Thorndike,  held  that  sat-, 
isfying  (agreeable,  pleasant)  results  tend  to  repetition  of  the  act  pro¬ 
ducing  them,  while  annoying  (disagreeable,  unpleasant)  results  tend 
to  omission  of  the  act.  The  law  was  thus  a  supplement  to  the  trial-and- 
error  description  of  learning.  This  well-known  law  has,  however,  been 
repeatedly  challenged.  How  can  the  result  of  an  act,  runs  one  query, 
work  in  backward  direction  upon  the  act  itself?  Or,  runs  another,  how 
can  the  mere  conscious  awareness  of  pleasantness  or  of  unpleasantness 
affect  a  physical  process? 

Experimental  inquiries  have  taken  different  forms.  A  recent  one  is 
that  in  which  a  person  learns  on  a  punch  board  or  a  stylus  maze  to 
make  the  correct  punch  or  correct  turn  at  each  of  some  thirty  choices 
arranged  in  irregular  serial  order  (see,  for  instance,  studies  by  Tolman, 


DASHIELL 


399 


Hall  and  Brctnall,  Muenzinger,  Crafts  and  Gilbert,  Bunch,  Hulin  and 
Katz).  In  different  experiments  the  right  responses  were  variously  ac¬ 
companied  In  no  signal,  by  buzzer,  or  by  shock;  and  the  accompani¬ 
ments  of  wrong  responses  were  equally  varied.  One  general  outcome  is 
that  the  attaching  of  physical  punishment  to  a  wrong  response  is  no 
more  effective  than  attaching  it  to  a  right  one;  nor  is  it  any  more  effec¬ 
tive  in  either  case  than  attaching  a  sound  signal.  Accordingly,  the  idea 
has  been  advanced  (a)  that  punishment  has  little  if  any  direct  guiding 
(eliminative)  value  in  its  own  right,  (6)  that  it  is  valuable  only  be¬ 
cause  it  is  informative,  or  (c)  because  it  speeds  up  or  energizes  the 
person  generally.  It  must  be  noted  also  that  if  the  punishment  be  too 
severe,  it  is  likely  to  disrupt  the  whole  process  of  learning. 

Meanwhile  Thorndike  has  been  repeatedly  demonstrating  with  sim¬ 
ple  experimental  materials  that  rewards  do  lead  somehow  to  the  repeti¬ 
tion  of  the  response  rewarded,  even  though  punishment  seems  to  have 
no  value. 

It  .may  be  added  that  the  other  classic  'secondary  laws’  of  associa¬ 
tive  learning — frequency,  recency,  primacy — have  not  been  shown  to 
be  important. 

VII.  The  Importance  of  the  Goal-Seeking  Attitude 

• 

What  is  to  be  made  of  the  relative  insignificance  of  incidental  re¬ 
wards  and  punishments  as  directors  of  learning,  especially  with  human 
beings?  Recall  that  either  a  reward  or  a  punishment  may,  if  attached 
to  a  right  response,  serve  very  well  for  the  fixing  of  that  response; 
clearly  it  gets  its  importance  not  from  its  own  intrinsic  character  but 
from  its  serving  as  a  helpful  cue  to  the  learner  in  obtaining  his  more 
ultimate  objective.  There  is  eloquent  testimony,  then,  in  the  experi¬ 
ments  referred  to  in  the  section  just  preceding,  that  one  cardinal  in¬ 
gredient  in  a  learning  process  is  that  the  learner  is  pursuing  some  objec¬ 
tive,  is  goal-seeking.  This  is  the  central  and  emphatic  contention  of 
the  more  active  members  of  the  original  Gestalt  school,  as  well  as  of 
others  not  to  be  so  identified.  Experiments  on  children,  apes,  and  other 
species  (Kohler,  Yerkes,  Bingham,  Lewin,  Alpert,  Matheson,  Mac- 
Dougall,  Wheeler,  and  many  others)  have  been  built  around  the  moti¬ 
vation  of  the  subjects  toward  some  objectives — a  banana  or  a  toy  hung 
vertically  out  of  reach  or  laid  beyond  the  cage  bars  too  far  to  be  grasped, 
so  that  the  subject  can  obtain  it  only  by  adopting  some  more  or  less 
original  way  of  laying  hold  of  it. 


400  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


In  some  of  the  animal  laboratories  this  motivational  phase  of  learn¬ 
ing  has  been  analyzed  (by  Tolman,  Honzig,  Elliott,  Blodgett,  V  illiams, 
Beeper,  and  others)  into  the  external  ‘incentive*  and  the  internal  ‘drive’; 
and  the  presence  of  both  of  them  has  been  proved  to  be  distinctly  more 
effective  than  the  presence  of  only  one,  while  the  absence  of  both  has 
been  attended,  for  the  most  part,  by  no  learning. 

These  results  of  these  experimental  investigations  reinforce  an  edu¬ 
cational  doctrine  that  has  been  preached  ever  since  Froebel;  namely, 
the  view  that  enlightened  teaching  looks  upon  the  pupil-student  neither 
(a)  as  a  passive  absorber,  nor  (6)  as  a  reactive  marionette,  nor  (c)  as 
a  machine  equipped  with  propeller  but  no  rudder,  but  instead  (d)  as  a 
desiring,  seeking,  interested  biological  organism  who  will  learn  best 
when  provided  with  objectives. 


VIII.  Principles  of  Economy  in  Learning 

Ebbinghaus,  in  his  pioneer  experimental  study  of  memorizing  in  the 
80’s,  brought  to  light  several  helpful  principles  on  how  to  learn.  They 
include  such  well-known  points  as  that  it  is  more  effective  to  distribute 
practice  over  separate  intervals  than  to  try  to  learn  completely  at  one 
sitting;  that  meaningful  material  is  more  easily  memorized  than  rote; 
that  attempts  actively  to  reproduce  what  one  is  memorizing  are  highly 
helpful;  that  to  strike  a  rhythm  in  the  reading  or  the  repeating  is  often 
of  value;  and  the  like.  All  the  foregoing  have  been  abundantly  sub¬ 
stantiated  in  the  volumes  of  findings  by  other  experimenters  (Muller, 
Meumann,  Reed,  Pyle,  Winch,  the  McGeochs,  and  a  great  many 
others) ;  but  one  of  Ebbinghaus’  practical  principles  continues  to  be 
challenged,  namely,  that  learning  a  thing  as  a  whole  is  more  effective, 
than  learning  it  piecemeal.  This  has  turned  out  to  be  true  only  under 
such  special  circumstances  that  it  no  longer  deserves  recognition  as  a 
general  law  (Pechstein,  Reed,  W.  Brown).  Many  sorts  of  modifica¬ 
tions  of  the  whole-part  principles  are  to  be  recommended — more,  in¬ 
deed,  than  we  have  room  to  enumerate. 


IX.  Transfer  of  Training 

The  pioneer  clearing  in  this  field  by  Thorndike  and  Woodworth  has 
been  greatly  extended  (Ebert  and  Meumann,  Fracker,  Judd,  Ruger, 
Dallenbach,  Bagley,  Crafts,  Bray,  and  numerous  others).  That  transfer 
does  take  place  is  frequently  apparent,  but  why  it  takes  place  in  one 
situation  and  not  in  another  is  difficult  to  determine.  Of  the  several 


DASH  I  ELL 


401 


theories  that  have  been  offered — identical  elements,  generalizations, 
ideals,  and  so  on — none  has  won  universal  adherence.  But  a  general 
agreement  would  be  obtained  on  some  such  proposition  as  the  following: 
a  beneficial  effect  of  training  in  a  given  school  subject  upon  one’s  work 
in  learning  other  subjects  resides  not  in  any  peculiar  and  inscrutable 
potency  within  the  subject  matter  itself,  nor  in  any  strengthening  of  the 
student’s  power  of  memory-in-general  or  attention-in-general  or  rea¬ 
soning-in-general;  it  resides  solely  in  those  habits  of  responding  in  this 
or  that  way  to  this  or  that  aspect  or  detail  that  are  common  to  both 
situations. 

Some  of  the  experimental  studies  have  shown  that  a  habit  that 
has  been  learned  may  not  after  all,  have  a  favorable  effect  on  the  learn¬ 
ing  of  another:  it  may  have  a  hindering  effect — the  phenomenon  of 
'interference’  (Miinsterberg,  Bergstrom,  W.  Brown,  Culler,  Poffen- 
berger) .  This  seeming  contradiction  in  the  two  phenomena  has  not 
been  well  resolvetl,  unless  it  be  in  a  recent  study  (Bruce)  wherein  it 
has  been  demonstrated  that  if  in  changing  from  one  learning  task  to 
another  the  stimulus  is  varied  but  the  response  is  unchanged,  a  trans¬ 
ference  effect  is  noted,  whereas  if  the  stimulus  is  unchanged  but  the 
response  is  varied,  an  interference  is  noted. 

X.  The  Neural  Bases  of  Learning 

Psychologists,  it  seems,  have  always  had  a  leaning  toward  the 
physiological  in  their  explanations  of  experiential  and  behavioral  phe¬ 
nomena,  and  there  is  today  a  persistent  interest  in  the  neural  bases  of 
learning.  According  to  the  older  conception,  differences  in  the  amount 
of  resistances  at  the  different  connecting  points,  or  synapses,  directed 
the  flow  of  neural  impulses  set  up  by  stimulation  at  a  receptor,  and  the 
effect  of  learning  was  to  change  these  differential  resistances  (by  some 
wearing-down  process)  so  that  thereafter  the  impulses  would  be  steered 
by  these  new  lines  of  least  resistance  into  other  motor  channels. 

Such  theories  imply  that  a  human  action  is  based  in  its  neural 

1  aspect  upon  a  stream  of  impulses  that  follows  one  specific  route  or  set 
of  routes,  and  that  a  learned  modification  is,  neurally  speaking,  a 
change  from  one  specific  route  to  another  specific  route.  But  this  ultra¬ 
simple  notion  of  the  achitecture  of  the  nervous  system  has  been  well- 
nigh  demolished  by  numerous  experimental  researches.  The  facts  of 
equivalence  of  stimuli,  of  transference,  of  variability  in  a  maze  habit, 
to  name  a  few,  are  difficult  or  impossible  to  interpret  in  terms  of  such 


402  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LEARNING 


pictures.  So,  too,  with  facts  of  everyday  schoolroom  observation;  c.g., 
when  a  child  learns  a  new  word,  and  then — if  properly  taught! — is  able 
to  use  the  word  in  correct  grammatical  sequences  in  a  hundred  different 
situations,  or,  as  when  he  has  acquired  ability  to  multiply,  can  carry 
on  this  operation  in  innumerable  connections. 

Tremendous  weight  has  been  added  to  these  objections  by  operative 
experiments  in  neuro-psychological  laboratories.  Franz  and  Lashley 
have  led  the  way;  and  in  latter  years  perhaps  a  dozen  laboratories  have 
provided  opportunity  for  work  of  the  sort  (by  Cameron,  Loucks,  Maier, 
C.  W.  Brown,  Liggett,  Jacobsen,  K.  U.  Smith,  Krechevsky,  Ghiselli, 
and  others).  In  outline,  the  procedure  is  to  train  an  animal  on  a  learn¬ 
ing  problem,  then  operatively  to  deprive  it  of  some  region  or  regions  of 
its  brain  or  other  structures  of  its  central  nervous  system,  and  then  to 
test  the  animal  for  its  retention  of  the.  habit  that  had  been  learned 
previous  to  the  deprivation.  A  variant  procedure  is  to  test  an  animal 
for  its  ability  to  learn  an  entirely  new  habit  after  sitch  operative  loss 
of  nerve  structures.  Certain  highly  specific  functions,  such  as  ability 
to  learn  to  choose  a  signal  that  bears  a  detailed  visual  pattern,  may  be 
found  dependent  upon  the  integrity  of  very  limited  parts  of  the  brain. 
Yet  when  anything  like  complex  behavior  is  to  be  learned,  such  as  the 
true  pathway  in  a  maze,  no  single  part  of  the  cerebral  cortex  seems 
absolutely  essential,  but  such  learning  is  a  function  of  the  cortex  as  a 
whole  or  of  as  much  of  it  as  the  operator’s  knife  or  cautery  has  left 
intact.  Thus,  a  complex  habit  is  not  dependent  upon  the  particular 
neural  connections  in  any  specific  area  of  the  brain  but  upon  the  total 
quantity  of  brain  tissue  that  is  intact.  To  generalize:  Learning  is  not 
the  building  up  of  highly  specific  and  fixed  pathways,  but  the  reaching 
of  some  new  equilibrium  in  that  dynamic  field  called  the  nervous 
system. 

One  thing  is  sure:  the  conventional  schemata  with  which  the  proc¬ 
esses  occurring  in  the  nervous  system  have  been  represented  on  paper 
and  blackboard  are  as  likely  to  impede  as  to  facilitate  a  fair  under¬ 
standing  of  how  learning  does  actually  occur.  For  all  practical  pur¬ 
poses,  then,  the  less  we  think  of  the  learner  in  physiological  terms  and 
the  more  we  observe  what  and  when  and  in  what  manner  he  learns, 
the  more  profitable  will  our  educational  efforts  be. 


DASH  I  ELL 


403 


Some  Classics  in  the  Psychology  of  Learning 

Ebbinghaus,  H.  Memory ,  1885.  (Trans,  by  Ruger  and  Bussenius,  1913). 

Bryan,  W.  L.,  and  Harter,  N.  “Studies  in  the  physiology  and  psychology  of  the 
telegraphic  language.”  Psychol.  Rev.,  4:  1897,  27-53.  (Reprinted  in  large  part 
in  Thorndike,  Educational  Psychology,  1913,  v.  II.) 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  “Animal  Intelligence.”  Psychol.  Monog.,  2:  1898,  No.  4.  (Re¬ 
printed  in  book  form,  1911,  now  out  of  print.) 

Book,  W.  F.  Psychology  oj  Skill.  1908.  (Reprinted,  1925.) 

Kohler,  W.  Mentality  of  Apes.  1925. 

Pavlov,  I.  P.  Conditioned  Reflexes.  1927. 

Lashley,  K.  S.  Brain  Mechanisms  and  Intelligence.  1929. 

Thorndike,  E.  L.  Human  Learning.  1931. 

Surveys  of  Experimental  Literature 

Bills,  A.  G.  General  Experimental  Psychology,  Chs.  IX-XIX. 

McGeoch,  J.  A.,  and  others.  Reviews  appearing  in  Psychological  Bulletin  since 

1927. 

Murchison,  C.  (ed.)  Handbook  of  General  Experimental  Psychology,  Chs.  IX- 
XI  (by  Hull,  Lashley,  Hunter). 


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